“What happened then, Gayle?” Nancy asked.
Gayle looked up at her. “Why . . . nothing. He let go and sort of stumbled away.”
“I’d just stepped away when the lights went out,” Jason said. “I leave you for one minute, Gayle, and this happens.” He clenched his fists with anger.
“Do you have any idea who it was?” Nancy asked Gayle. “Was there anything familiar about his voice, for instance?”
Gayle bowed her head. “No, nothing,” she said, her voice rising. “Nothing!”
Carlo stepped between Nancy and Gayle. “Enough,” he said. “Gayle, you have had a shock. Go home, get a good night’s sleep, and we will resume tomorrow morning.”
Stella pushed forward. “Carlo, you can’t!” she exclaimed. “Just when we’d found a way to move ahead with the shoot.”
“Stella’s right,” Sherman Pike added. “We’re so far behind already.”
“After what has happened, you expect Gayle to perform at her best?” Carlo demanded. “No, no, no.”
“Carlo, please,” Gayle said anxiously, pushing herself out of her chair. “I’m ready, really I am. Look, Maxine and Ghalia did such terrific jobs on my hair and face. Why waste their work, and everybody else’s?”
Nancy noticed the alarm on Gayle’s face, as if she saw her big chance slipping right away from her. Was that what the saboteur had hoped would happen?
“We will all do even better work in the morning,” Carlo replied. He patted Gayle’s hand. “You will see. Now, home with you.”
He looked over his shoulder at his film crew. “Eight o’clock call tomorrow,” he said. “We have had much bad luck, but I have a feeling this will change. Good night and thank you.”
People began to drift away, but Nancy and Bess stayed where they were. Nancy was busy measuring with her eyes the distance between the electrical panel, near the entrance to the studio, and Gayle’s chair. It was about fifteen feet, with no obstacles. After switching off the lights, the person would have been able to reach Gayle’s chair quickly, guided by the faint glow of the Exit sign behind him.
“One person, acting alone, could have tripped the circuit breakers, reached Gayle’s chair to threaten her, then faded into the crowd before the lights came back on,” Nancy said to Bess. “That means that everyone in the studio is a potential suspect.” Her eyes darted around the studio, noting who was there. “We didn’t see Miklos around this time,” she added in a low voice, “but that doesn’t mean he didn’t slip in and out without being seen. In this chaos, that would’ve been fairly easy.”
“Gayle seemed to think it was a man, from his deep voice,” Bess pointed out.
“Yes, but a woman could have lowered her voice enough to fool Gayle,” Nancy said.
Charmaine came over and said, “Hey, guys, you got any plans? As soon as we can wrap it up here, some of us are going to a blues club. They have terrific barbecued ribs. You want to come?”
Nancy looked up eagerly. She’d been hoping for a chance to talk to Charmaine and the other crew members away from the studio. Maybe they could give her some useful leads on Miklos. She glanced over at Bess, who looked hypnotized by the thought of barbecued ribs.
“Great! Unless you’ve started your big diet already, Bess,” said Nancy.
Bess poked Nancy with her elbow. “Tomorrow, I said,” she declared. “So I’d better fill up tonight.”
Nancy copied the address down from Charmaine and agreed to meet her and the others there in half an hour.
As she and Bess started toward the door, Nancy was amused to see that the box of Healthibits was no longer on the table. Someone on the crew must have decided that he needed a snack!
“Another delay,” Bess was saying. “It’s a good thing Erik wasn’t here, or he probably would’ve blamed it on Stella. I wish he’d lighten up.”
“Maybe he thinks it’ll help his career if Stella looks bad,” Nancy replied. “She’s not really to blame, but—” Then Nancy stopped in her tracks.
“But what?” Bess demanded.
“Bess, didn’t Stella just say that Erik was home tonight in Lake Forest?” Nancy demanded.
“Sure. With hay fever,” Bess replied. “Why?”
“The shopping bag that started the fire here this afternoon came from a fancy store in Lake Forest,” Nancy said. “Erik could have put it there on purpose, knowing it would melt and smoke up the studio. And what if he made the set fall over, too? We saw him hanging around there yesterday, right before it fell.”
“So you think he’s been trying to wreck the shoot, to make Stella look bad?” Bess said. “Sure, it all fits. But, Nancy, he wasn’t here this evening. He couldn’t have doused the lights and threatened Gayle.”
“That’s true,” Nancy admitted. “But I still suspect he was responsible for that shopping bag stunt. Maybe the fire marshal could link the bag to him. We should pass on this tip, first thing in the morning.”
After retrieving the Mustang from the parking lot, Nancy and Bess found their way to the blues club Charmaine had told them about. It was a couple of miles south of the Loop, in a brick building that looked like a converted garage.
Inside, long, narrow tables stretched out like fingers from the still darkened stage. Each table seated fifteen or twenty people on each side.
A side room held four brightly lit pool tables, all in use. At one, two young guys in baggy jeans and ragged football jerseys were playing intently. Their neighbors at the next pool table wore business suits and freshly shined loafers. “I guess this is a place for all tastes,” Nancy commented with a smile.
“Hey, guys,” Charmaine called. “Over here.” She and some other crew members were sitting at a big round table at the back of the main room. Nancy and Bess pulled up two more metal folding chairs and sat down.
“We already ordered for you,” Charmaine announced. “Ribs and fries. Is that okay? It’s what they do best.”
“It’s about all they do,” Maxine, the hair stylist, said with a laugh.
“That, too,” Charmaine said, grinning. “Anybody orders the fried chicken, the kitchen probably has to send out for it.”
While they waited for the food, Nancy chatted with the guy on her left, a sound engineer named Vinnie. He said he remembered seeing her that morning at Paul Norman’s studio.
“At Norman’s?” Nancy asked. “But don’t you work for Carlo?”
